Geist in my machine » Twitter

The power and danger of social media

Jane — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:35:23 +0000

From February 1-5, 2010, Canadian journalist Janic Tremblay participated in an experiment called Behind Closed Doors on the Net. Five journalists stayed in a farmhouse in France for five days, cut off from mainstream media, only allowed to use Twitter and Facebook as sources of information. Tremblay was further restricted in that he was not allowed to click on links to other sources.

In my previous post, I wrote that this experiment could only test the accuracy of each journalist’s contact list, not the utility of social media.

In his interview with BBC after the experiment, Tremblay concludes,

“you won’t know the truth from Twitter…it’s one source, a little bit of information.”

While I still take issue with the study design, this experiment did magnify both the power and the danger of relying only on social media for reliable news.

On the plus side, Tremblay was able to conduct an interview with a jailed Russian activist. The detainee was somehow still in possession of his smartphone and tweeted from a jail cell for three hours, even though he had no legal representation and not been informed about why he was being held. The power and immediacy of Twitter (and possession of a smartphone) made this interview possible.

In another example, Tremblay points out the danger of relying on a little information without verifying sources. An explosion was heard in a particular city and within minutes, people were tweeting about it, adding their own speculations about the cause. In a few hours, there was a Facebook page set up with 5000 members. But what really happened was that a plane had crossed the sound barrier, a much different truth than the wild hypotheses.

Twitter and Facebook are only tools for communicating. Journalists must verify sources and publish with integrity.

5 Behind Closed Doors on the Net

Jane — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:38:50 +0000

From Feb. 1-5, five radio journalists will sequester themselves in a French farmhouse with only Twitter and Facebook for outside information. All other media such as radio, television, and mobile phones are banned. The objective is to test the legitimacy of news from Twitter and Facebook. The five radio journalists from Canada, France, Belgium, and Switzerland will each report on their respective radio stations. According to Press Gazette:

“The reporters from France Inter, France Info, RTS and RTBF radio will be allowed to click on links put up on Twitter and Facebook, with the exception of Janic Tremblay from Radio Canada, who will be attempting the experiment without ever leaving the two social media sites. France Info will be hosting five live debates on the issue every day throughout the course of the experiment.”

Mathew Ingram posted his thoughts on GigaOM.com. He says this project will only prove:

“that some journalists — and their masters (the experiment is being sponsored by the French public broadcasting association) — are as clueless as anyone else about Twitter or Facebook and how those services can benefit journalism.”

Faulty research design will produce faulty results. A small, qualitative focus group packaged as a reality show will really be testing the quality and accuracy of each journalist’s contact list, not the utility of Twitter or Facebook. They are only tools for information sharing, the platforms where people connect. It’s still up to humans to verify sources and publish quality content.

Understanding Twitter

Jane — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 18:07:30 +0000

As I come up to speed on the latest communications technology I have stumbled across several fellow bloggers using Twitter. Click on someone’s Twitter link and you get their stream of consciousness-touch base ‘tweets’ with others in their contact list. (Interesting these are called ‘tweets’ rather than ‘twits’!) But there is no story, no point it seems if you are not part of their tribe. I don’t see why someone else would care about a single sentence touch base that is little more than a text message by another format. Maybe it just says, “hey, I’m here, and this is what I’m doing today”. But who cares? Does someone really care that I’m at the grocery store buying groceries yet again? Probably not. Of interest, Malcolm Gladwell tweets an observation that a bread truck stopped and gave some bread to a homeless fellow. This kind of observation and the story implied by one word ‘inspiring’ is far more interesting than a first person account of somebody’s day.